Other ways to gauge customer satisfaction: don't limit yourself strictly to direct customer surveys. You can also gather useful information indirectly through social media and regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

AuthorRamirez, Steven J.

Building your bank's reputation for exceptional service can help you to maximize the impact of your marketing budget. When customers have a positive experience, they deepen their relationships. When they deepen their relationships, they increase their balances and are more likely to consider cross-sell offers--and are less likely to leave. These customers can also generate word of mouth and drive revenue growth by recommending your bank to others.

Every bank wants happy customers, but you cannot effectively grow the number of these customers until you start systematically assessing the strength of their satisfaction. So are there easy ways to measure customer satisfaction?

Gaining customer intelligence

Banks can now transform a wealth of data into actionable insights to enhance their business and improve overall customer satisfaction. Making sense of this data requires banks to strategically gather information throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

You can think about the customer lifecycle across five stages: awareness, pre-sales, sale, customer service and advocacy. Effectively managing the lifecycle requires banks to focus on monitoring and constantly improving the customer experience at each stage.

A diversity of different types of data makes for richer customer insights. As you develop your approach, you should consider:

* Internal data (customer feedback, calls, surveys).

* External data (social media/public message boards).

* Regulatory data (CFPB).

There are three strategies your bank can pursue to gather the customer data needed to build stronger interactions. Each strategy can leverage traditional feedback mechanisms, such as person-to-person interactions or phone calls, as well as digital channels.

Strategy 1: Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Even the smallest financial institution has the capacity to develop and implement an effective customer feedback survey. Surveys can help you learn more about the customer experience and establish a benchmark for measuring customer loyalty over time.

Your approach to developing a survey, including what questions you ask and when you ask them, will depend on your marketing priorities. For example, with a personal line of credit customer, you might solicit feedback after an initial meeting with a banker, gather input on how they felt about the closing process, and months later survey how well your bank is meeting their ongoing financial needs. Open-ended questions are especially valuable...

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